The First Day of Winter
by Lenn.n.n
Summary: He was not always as he is now. Once, there was courage and kindness in his heart. He was defiant, promising, and magically talented, once upon a time--a time before the truest love burned and blackened everything from his life. This is his story.


Good evening readers. This is an old project that may very well fail to see further light of day, but nonetheless, I would appreciate reviews and any encouragement to continue.

I do not own harry potter or said universe. NO profit is being made by this story. I hold J.K. Rowling at the highest regard and mean no offense or infringement to her work.

Most importantly, Special thanks to Silverness / Silver Passion for rather accidentally inspiring this story, years and years ago. Wherever you are, girl, I hope you're doing well!

_I came across a fallen tree._

_I felt the branches of it looking at me._

_Is this the place we used to love?_

_Is this the place that I've been dreaming of?_

Chapter One: Paradise Lost

The door clicks, and the light from the corridor is reduced to a slither of yellow along the tiled floor. Still seething, I blink, trying to adjust my eyes to the darkness.

"Allow me, let me get it," the old man murmurs, so quietly that I briefly wonder if that slit on his face is really a mouth, or if someone had grown as annoyed with him as I and had taken a knife to his chin.

He waves his wand, and light re-illuminates his office. As he places the wand back onto his desk, I notice with some satisfaction the dark, round droops of skin beneath his eyes. It appears that I am bothering him while he is fatigued...good.

"I think, Filch," he drawls, in his usual collected voice, "that it is time you returned to your duties?"

"Those little brats were out after curfew," I growl menacingly, managing to keep a semblance of control as I scratch the wooden table beside me. There will be splinters to remove and marks left behind, but I don't very well care. "Ya shouldn'ta let them get off so easily!"

"If you are ever headmaster," he replies, responding to my vehemence with a lifted eyebrow, "Then that will be your problem. As of now, it is not."

That stung. There was a taunt about my _squibbiness _hidden in that statement. It only fueled me more. "What's the matter with you?" I bark, raising my arms and curled fingers and bringing them down with one swift, violent motion. "You _always_ ruin things like this!"

"Ruin things, Argus!?" His collected drawl is gone, replaced by the sternness he often uses when addressing poor Snape. Merlin, that professor has it bad. It's because he has sense, I figure—why else would he be persecuted? "Ruin what, Argus? Ruin your fun? Is it that you are _looking_ for ill behavior in the students?"

I stare at him incredulously. Just what am I supposed to do, if not that?

Abruptly I realized that Dumbledore is no longer addressing me with a stern glare, but with analyzing eyes, as though he had lost something inside of my face and was seeking it out. I erect my posture haughtily and seethe, hoping my stone-shattering glare would make him at least stop acting so creepy. We stand like that for a while, his eyes penetrating me, searching, until my face grows sore and I let the scowl fall from my face.

"You've lost it, then."

"What!?" Did he just question my sanity to my face?

"It's gone. You had it once, but it's gone. You've lost it somewhere, buried in the graves of your past."

_It_? What is _it_?

"I've lost _everything _to my past," I spit, "and for all I care, I'm leavin' it there! I'm damn glad it's all gone!"

A mew emanates from the corner, and I pause in my anger. Two wet and muddy paws land on my legs suddenly, and haul themselves up my form, finally relaxing on my shoulders. A furry muzzle sticks its wet self into my ear, and I can feel whiskers brushing against my neck.

Mrs. Norris.

"You don't miss anything, Argus?" Dumbledore says gently. "Are you truly glad it's gone?" I pretend to be preoccupied with stroking my cat behind her ears, but I know, with some agitation, what is coming next.

"Is everything really in the past, my boy? Is it really all behind you, now…even your wife?"

I knew it was coming. But that doesn't stop the rush of anger that ignites inside me.

"HOW DARE YOU!!!" I hollered, and Mrs. Norris spits, leaping from my shoulder and into the corner behind fluttering red drapes. I pay her no heed, lost in the smoke of my fiery ire. "HOW DARE YOU MENTION HER NAME, LIKE THAT, LIKE A MEANS TO AN END! SHE HAS NOTHING TO DO WITH THIS!"

"Yes," the old man whispered, "she does, my boy. She has everything to do with this."

I backhand some fragile object on his table, sending it crashing onto the tiles. "OH? And just HOW is that?"

"_How? _ You've forgotten her, Argus." He is standing up now, looking down at me like he did when I was ten years old, young and naive. "You have shoved her memory into the past and done it no justice!"

"Hah. _Memory_," I spit.

Dumbledore sighs, cocking his head to the side and lifting an eyebrow. "Well then, you have shoved _her_ into the past. You have forsaken and forgotten her."

"Once again, _how so?_" I glared at him expectantly, ignoring the tiny mew that came from behind the curtains. "Give me one good example."

Much to my surprise, he points out the window.

I glance out the fogged and speckled glass, finding nothing of any importance. Only a dull, long expanse of barren land, skeletons of trees that clap each other's branches, and the snow—meager, scant little flakes, bladed with cold.

I look back at him, my eyes narrow, and shake my head, sending him the silent message that he's lost me completely.

"Today, my boy," he whispers, "Is the first day of Winter."

The candle flickers and the flame bends, as though cowering at the silence that has suddenly spread itself across the darkening room. I open my mouth and then close it, as the wind beats hard at the window. Mrs. Norris slowly creeps from behind the curtains, her head low, red eyes heavy upon mine. She mews.

I turn away. I cannot look at anyone in the eye...not Dumbledore, and not even some stupid cat.

Finally, I find my voice. "Big deal," I croak. "So I forgot what day it was...it happens to everyone..." I curse my voice for its hoarseness. I curse myself again when Mrs. Norris meows, loudly. "I haven't forgotten her, damnit, I haven't. I'll never forget her. But my past...my past can _rot_." Bending down, I lift my sweet, mewing fur sack onto my shoulder, where she props herself soundly, licking a paw.

I turn sharply towards the door, but pause before it. I place my palm against the door-handle and snarl over my shoulder, "and so can you, you worthless _failure_," before lunging into the hall and slamming the door shut behind me.

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I rather enjoy the darkness, at places like this and at this time of night. They put me into such a meditative state, and sometimes my mind completely escapes me. Letting my head become hollow, filling with the emptiness of the surrounding dark, so that I may fill it again with thoughts of paradise.

_Arms kneading the flesh of my waist_

_A reprimanding voice_

_Running fingers through grainy hair_

_Conversations of snails and trees_

My hollow head sometimes forgets to rid itself of its capacity for pain…so, every so often, I avoid my longing for heaven. I think on other things, such as the expectations that I have failed to meet.

Bah. Expectations—High or low, they are rarely met—always, there is a quirk or glitch in one's planning. There are misinterpretations, miscalculations, always that crush one's expectations underfoot. After having fathomed my upcoming despair for so long, only to meet one such fate, I am living only for the moment. The future is unpredictable, something full of setbacks, and no matter how it is planned, it always decides to carve its own path.

And we mortals are bound hand and foot to that road. Why attempt to stray from it?

Me, I wait for Future to lay her path out before me. I do not attempt to disrupt her art with such petty things as expectations and predictions. Leave that responsibility to fate. And leave me out of it.here.

So, one would think—no expectations equals no surprises, yes? Well, being the fool that I am, I had the nerve to be shocked when I found out it wasn't so. Even the lack of an expectation is an expectation.

And so it is no wonder to me that, when I rounded the hallway corner towards the spiraling staircase that would lead me towards the infirmary, I stopped dead in my tracks and had to stifle an exclamation of shock.

When I first beheld the fourth-year child crouched in the marble curve of the stairs, her face plastered in her knees and shoulders quaking with the effort of crying, I thought for a moment that I had stepped back in time. I very nearly dropped my lantern and staggered over to the crumpled and crying girl to dry her tears and hold her close...

But Mrs. Norris, the clever little animal that she is, rubbed herself against the crook of my knee and meowed, eyeing the crying child with her red, hungry eyes. The memory swept away from me like a blanket being tugged from a sleeping body, and I hardened and growled.

Finally, a chance to vent some anger.

"What ya doin' up at this time o' night?" I snickered, and the child cringed and looked up at me fiercely. Her hot eyes met mine, and Mrs. Norris hissed at my feet. "The sun is down," I said, curling my lip upward with pleasure. "And the halls are empty. What..."

_What._

I had meant to ask, "_what are you doing up after hours?"_

But....

What?

What had I just said?

_The sun is down, Argus..._

_The sun is down._

Will these ghosts _ever_ stop chasing me?

I felt faint for a moment. The child continued to eye my hotly, and even as my face hardened, my comprehension staggered. I could not help but think that her hair should have been dirty brown, not black, and that staircase she was on should have been wooden and not marble, and that there should have been a finger-sized scratch in the foremost pillar. Griffin sculptures should have been framing the railings, not phoenixes. The hallways should have been a tad larger than this, those stairs higher. And there should have been a hand-stitched scarf around her neck, blue and yellow.

I think that Mrs. Norris yowled at me then, but for a seven-year-long minute, I could not move and could not hear. Or, I did, but not her, and nothing within immediate reach of me. Those sounds were overtaken by voices, voices rising from the graves of my memory to cast a shadow of shame over my remains.

One high-pitched voice, full of pompous knowledge.

One shy voice, soft and male, absent and subdued.

And one voice that sounded like a flower sprouting from stiff, snow-covered soil.

And in that moment, the voices painted the world black around me, and led me through a darkness that I had stuffed away in my mind a long, long time ago. They snatched the turmoil from these halls and unfamiliarity from my heart, and they replaced it with a paradise of the past, a paradise I had long hated, and a paradise I had long and forever lost.

_Virginia..._

_Oh simple thing, where have you gone?_

_I'm getting old, and I need something to rely on_

_So tell me when you're going to let me in;_

_I'm getting tired, and I need somewhere to begin._

- KEANE, "Somewhere Only We Know"

Author's Notes:

There will be an opening Quote to every chapter. Each one will have a relevance to the story and its given section, although it may only become clear later on. That is, if there are ever any new chapters.

J.K. Rowling owns all characters and settings unless specified at the end of the chapter. Virginia is an original character. The child crying in the corner is an original character. More soon to come.

You claim this fan-fiction as your own, or if you steal my identity, I will do everything in my power to stop you, as well as have you locked up. I am not joking. Stay way, thieves. *sounds of metal being sharpened*

So...yeah. Confusing chapter, isn't it? Don't worry—you're not supposed to understand it just yet. You're not supposed to know why the first day of winter is so important yet, or why Filch stopped and staggered at that one staircase, but trust me, once...or if...the story ends, you'll understand every last confusing detail above :D and that, of course, is why you need to keep reading...and reviewing!


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